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{
    "id": 1032073,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1032073/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 365,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "When you talk about reduction in corporate tax and PAYE, these are people who are already in the formal space and that is the minority in this Republic. What about the informal sector? Of course you will tell me that VAT applies to everybody because it is a consumption tax. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the President needs to think much more about the informal sector because that is the driver of this economy. It is easy for the President to tell us how many companies are registered every day. I do recall he gave us a figure of about 400 companies every day, but how many companies are collapsing every day? It is easy to tell us that youth are getting jobs through Kazi Mtaani program, but how many people are losing jobs every day? The spirit of a State of the Nation Address is not to tell us intentions. It is to tell us the results of the policy interventions and the measures that the Government has taken. How many people are now in abject poverty? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you know that this economy has shrunk for the first time in the last seven years. If our economy has shrunk and we became a middle income economy simply because our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had risen and perhaps it was because of the rebasing of the GDP, are we still a middle income economy? How many people have shrunk further into poverty as a result of these economic dynamics? I wish and hope that in future, the President will be focused more on the results of his interventions rather than the intentions that he has for this Nation. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the National Youth Council (NYC) that has been proposed in the BBI is a brilliant idea. Sen. Sakaja was here and in the last Parliament we were in the Committee on national Cohesion, Equal Opportunity and Regional Integration. Through him we pushed through the National Employment Authority (NEA) which has done nothing to ensure that young people get opportunities. If you want to know how an employment authority would work, I want to invite the nation. If you like to read the comic strip of a man called Andy Capp, Andy Capp is supposed to be a typical British middle aged man who loves his beer and football. Every day he goes to an employment agency or bureau where they help him to get placement for jobs. Unfortunately, he is a bit of a miscreant so ever since I started following Andy Capp, he has never gotten a job. That is what the NEA was supposed to do until they started staffing it with people who are basically octogenarians and are completely out of touch with the needs of the young people in this Republic. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, that is one of the reasons why I support the BBI proposals to establish a Youth Commission that would specialize in matters that affect the youth and will mainstream youth issues in the national conversation, planning, budgets and policies. A lot of us in this House have spoken to the powers of the Senate."
}